SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 7, 2005 — Three years after the launch of Visual Studio® .NET, S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp., highlighted vast customer, partner and academic adoption of Microsoft®
.NET to build connected systems, Web services and smart-client applications using Microsoft’s development tools. In his keynote address at Fawcette Technical Publications’ VSLive! San Francisco 2005, Somasegar also unveiled new resources for enterprise developers, announced Microsoft’s expanded partnership with Visual Studio Industry Partners (VSIPs) Micro Focus International Ltd. and LogicLibrary Inc., and highlighted the success of .NET customer American Healthways Inc. Somasegar also announced the upcoming availability of the second community technology preview (CTP) of Microsoft’s presentation subsystem code-named “Avalon,” slated for release in March 2005. This CTP introduces several advances including new controls, improvements to the layout system, performance improvements and enhanced XAML support.

“Looking back at the launch of Visual Studio .NET, our goal was to empower developers to lead the world into the new era of Web services,” Somasegar said. “Three years later Web services are simplifying application and data integration across all customer segments, connecting people and partners and revolutionizing the worlds of business and academia. We stand resolute in our mission to improve our tools and platform, partner with leading tools vendors, and provide a wealth of resources to ensure that developers remain at the forefront of technology innovation.”

Industry data demonstrates the progress of .NET adoption. Forrester Research Inc.’s May 2004 report, titled “The State of Technology Adoption,” showed that 56 percent of North American companies surveyed planned to use .NET for the majority of their development work in 2004. In addition, in five out of seven industries surveyed — including manufacturing, business services and the public sector — .NET was the leading platform. More than 225 VSIP program members are shipping some 400 products, demonstrating how Microsoft is offering customers a comprehensive ecosystem of partners that assist in solution development and project completion with a wide range of additional tools, components and services.

Microsoft Partner Extends Commitment to Visual Studio

Micro Focus, a leading provider of legacy application development and deployment software, today announced it has selected Microsoft Visual Studio as its single integrated development environment (IDE) for legacy application development targeting a wide range of deployment platforms. Customers will be able to deliver mission-critical applications that unlock the value of legacy assets regardless of their deployment platform. This announcement extends Micro Focus’ commitment to the Microsoft VSIP program and continues to strengthen the ties between legacy systems and the latest Microsoft technology.

“As Microsoft .NET technologies continue to take a stronger foothold in the enterprise, our strengthened relationship with Microsoft is of continued importance to our customers who are seeking simpler and faster ways to build connected systems,” said Tony Hill, chief executive officer at Micro Focus. “We believe that Visual Studio and our strategic commitment to VSIP will further bridge the gap between valuable legacy assets and contemporary platforms.”

Microsoft and Partners Offer New Resources to Ease Enterprise Development

Microsoft today also announced the availability of new resources for enterprise developers wanting to build connected systems: the Connected Systems Business Kit and the patterns & practices Enterprise Library. The Connected Systems Business Kit is a collection of sample applications, presentations, white papers and videos that illustrate how to implement connected systems and service-oriented architectures using current technologies. The Connected Systems Business Kit is available for customers at http://www.microsoft.com/connectedsystems . The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a collection of application blocks designed to assist enterprise developers with common enterprise development challenges and help them build high-quality solutions with less effort. Developers are able to use the blocks as is, extend them to meet new requirements by plugging in their own code, or use them as the basis for more-complex solutions. Enterprise Library is available as a free download at the patterns & practices Web site ( http://www.microsoft.com/practices ). In conjunction with the release, Microsoft VSIP partner LogicLibrary announced it will include the patterns & practices Enterprise Library in its Logidex metadata repository, enabling Logidex customers to easily share and reuse Enterprise Library application blocks across development projects.

New Enhancements for the Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC 2005 Platform

The Tablet PC SDK 1.7 plugs right in to Visual Studio .NET and, soon, Visual Studio 2005, enabling developers to create interactive ink-based applications for the Tablet PC. Today, there are over 200 applications available for purchase or download optimized to run on Tablet PCs. Microsoft expects the number of applications to grow steadily. Within the last nine months, the number of independent software vendors (ISVs) planning to integrate pen and ink in their Windows®
-based applications has doubled to over 450 companies worldwide. Microsoft is committed to increasing the ease of development of Tablet PC applications and broadening the market for Tablet PC applications, and is proud to announced two enhancements to this end.

Today, together with 3Leaf Development, Microsoft announced a new Tablet PC Game SDK. This SDK will foster the development of casual games that incorporate some of the unique features of the Tablet PC, especially pen and ink functionality. This SDK will help teach developers how to incorporate features such as velocity of pen movement, pressure sensitivity, gesture-based gaming, and line routing into their games in fun and innovative ways. In addition, Microsoft and 3Leaf Development are building a community around the development of the first game developed from this project, called “Arcs of Fire” ( http://www.arcsoffire.com ). Developers are encouraged to join the “Arcs of Fire” community and contribute not only to the development of this game, but also to the further development of the Tablet PC Game SDK. “Arcs of Fire” will be available free for developers and end users, and all of the source code will be available free for all developers at the Arcs of Fire Web site.

Agilix Labs, a Tablet PC premier partner, today announced the general availability of Agilix InfiNotes, a commercial-quality note-taking control that takes advantage of the .NET Framework to provide rich drag-and-drop ink note-taking for new or existing Windows XP-based applications, significantly reducing development time for note-taking applications. InfiNotes installs into Visual Studio .NET and integrates into the Toolbox, giving developers a familiar and consistent design-time interface. Microsoft has joined with Agilix Labs to bring the standard version of InfiNotes to the developer community as a free download ( http://www.infinotes.com ). InfiNotes wraps Microsoft Windows Journal-like functionality into a simple managed control, which runs in both Windows Forms and Web Forms.

More information about the Tablet PC partner program, designed to help ISVs and developers market their applications, can be found at http://www.tabletpcpartners.com .

Excitement in Academic Community

Through a request for proposal (RFP) process, Microsoft Research University Relations expects to make up to 10 awards, totaling up to $450,000 in funding, to the Phoenix RFP award for advanced research in optimization and software analysis using an analysis and optimization framework. Phoenix is a collaboration between Microsoft Research, the Microsoft Visual C++®
back-end team, and the Microsoft Common Language Runtime (CLR) team. Phoenix has evolved into a framework targeted at optimization and code analysis that provides a rich foundation for tools of the sort built by Microsoft Research and the academic community. In essence Phoenix allows researchers working on post-front-end design, analysis and code-generation issues to focus on their area of interest and expertise while still obtaining a product-quality result.

In addition, Microsoft recently announced an RFP for Tablet PC. The Tablet PC initiative will fund curriculum development projects that explore the Tablet PC’s potential to help make computing content and instruction more engaging and effective. The goals of the program are to enable higher success rates for students, to attract more high-quality students to computing programs, and to open the world of computing to students not majoring in computer science.

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